3rd, 4th and 5th Grade Newsletter
September 14, 2009

Classroom Economy
Today was payday! Each student was paid for their jobs and for the days they were in school last week. Desk rent will be due on Friday. Starting this week students can also receive fines!

Glenn’s Ditch
Our trip to Glen’s Ditch on Friday was a lot of fun. Students explored different areas of the ditch looking for animal and plant life. We will talk more this week about the focus of our year-long study and make another trip Friday afternoon.

Language Arts
We will have a “normal” schedule this week for Language Arts. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have our Literature Group Meetings. We started our first book last week; “The Chalk Box Kid.” We are reading this as a whole class with some second graders joining us. After we finish this book the class will be split into smaller groups of 2, 3, or 4 students reading and studying the same book. Occasionally, there will be homework assignments for Literature Groups. It might be reading homework (it can count towards reading minutes in planners) or writing associated with the book that is being read.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we will work on writing skills and practice a variety of forms of writing. Different skills will be covered each week. We have been working on writing complete sentences and capitalization and punctuation skills. We will work on paragraph writing this week.

Each Friday there will be a spelling list. Each student has an individualized spelling list that they should study at home. Each Monday they write their spelling words in their planners. These words will remain on their lists until they are mastered.

Monthly, we will take a trip to the library as part of a year-long genre and library skills study. On our first Kate taught us about the Dewey Decimal System. This had come in handy as the students are reorganizing our classroom books on our new bookshelves!

Each week there will be a writing assignment given as homework on Monday and due on Friday. The assignment will be described in detail on a paper that is brought home in the Red Folder on Mondays. It will usually consist of a composition paper covering skills and/or topics that we are working on in class. The assignments will differ slightly depending upon which grade your child is in.

Paragraph a Week
The paragraph assignment this week is “Paragraph Sandwich.”

Word of the Week: atom